Build in performance and flexibility in key SOA business applications and other high performance computing applications.  Presents an elegant solution which crosses the spectrum of industries and programming languages.  Uses real world problems and offers architectural and design solutions that assist readers with relating subject matter to real-life business requirements.  Helps IT managers determine what they need without reprogramming for complicated business applications. Companies today are facing a cold reality: in order to meet rigorous demand, new business applications must increase performance - not just incrementally, but by an order of magnitude far beyond previous requirements. Multi-core servers, are the latest chip advances to address performance, but most of the core business applications are not written to take advantage of these technologies. Parallel computing using Software Pipelines models can change this, and business technology executives need to know how it can help them. By using basic concepts of fluid dynamics, the text provides instruction on how Software Pipelines architecture answers the challenge of increasing performance of business applications at every turn and how it can be further leveraged to maximize the horsepower of today's multi-core hardware. Through real-life business scenarios presented throughout the text and examples of standard software pipelines design patterns, IT managers will learn how companies can scale applications to any size, maximize their resources, and most of all, maintain critical requirements that allow them to deliver on even their most challenging business objectives - in many cases, with a Return on Investment (ROI) far better than they could have ever imagined.